September 2011
17 posts
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Smokey the Bear
Memoir Excerpt
Asheville, North Carolina, 1960’s
Our property apparently reached only a little ways beyond our backyard into the woods and my mother showed me where that line was and told me not to go past it. She never really enforced that boundary, but she did refer to it from time to time. I’m pretty sure she didn’t think I’d really adhere to that limit. She grew up on a farm, and she...
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Dear Senator Schumer,
I’m not writing about a topic on the list on your website. I’m asking for some fight from you against the conservative bluster I see and hear so much of.
Now is a time for some powerful rhetoric from the progressives. If we are in the right, we need to stand up and defend the ideological ground upon which we stand. This is not just a battle of policy, it’s a battle of...
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Journal Fragment, Shikoku, Japan, 1988
First ride: Quiet man, careful driver, through mountains.
Second ride: A pair of ladies, older middle aged, crushed pink velvet hard-case purse. Trunk empty, but for one baseball cap.
In Shikoku dead autos pile up; no, stack up and wait.
A bell hangs from the shift lever. She drives with bare feet.
A young guy picks me up. He is eager to chat. Offers to take me all the way to Yoshida but I...
Journal Fragment, 1990, Train to Sweden
The horizon, one perfectly flat blue line in each of twenty windows
Dark blue water below light blue sky above
What color is the line? Doesn’t it exist?
Are you an empiricist? Then what color is it?
Journal Fragment, Puerto Galera, Philippines, 1985
I heard what I thought were maybe machine gunshots. They went rattatattat – like in the news. And that was it. They were very quiet.
Mark is now chanting something – something – something – Lalaguna beach. The banana girl comes and listens to one earphone.
There was a funeral, too. I thought at first it was just a lot of people. Then I thought it was a church service. But the sad woman in...
